


This is kinda messed up (but hey, what else is new?)

by The_Readers_Muse



Category: The Walking Dead (TV), The Walking Dead - All Media Types, Walking Dead
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dissociation, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Rough Sex, heavy emotional and mental trauma, homosexual character having heterosexual sex, read authors note for further warnings and details, reference to main character off camera death and suicide, reference to panic attacks/mental breaks, season 5 - post Coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:10:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3169349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Readers_Muse/pseuds/The_Readers_Muse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her laugh was weak, a gross shadow of what had once been as she cocked her head and looked him right in the eye.</p><p>"So, what else is new?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
> 
> Authors Note #1: Set post "Coda" in an arc where everything has gone down the shitter and it is just Glenn and Tara left. This was originally inspired by something on tumblr but quickly became one of those ideas that just had to exist, you know? Glenn is a very under written character in this fandom, especially in terms of his development past season one.
> 
> Warnings: Expect canon appropriate violence, mature language, rough sex with elements of possible dub-con, a homosexual character having heterosexual sex with another heterosexual character, possible consent issues, anger, angst, heavy emotional and mental trauma, references to panic attacks and mental breaks, dissociation, seriously unsound mental/emotional capacity and questionable decision making that will hopefully make sense in the end.

_He hadn't gotten to say good bye._

It seemed like a pretty stupid thing to get hung up on, considering. But for right now that was what burned him the most. He felt wronged.  _Cheated._  Like his life was just one big, gross cosmic joke and the irony gods had just planted yet another pile of shit on his doorstep and expected him to call it roses.

He didn't realize he'd said it out loud until Tara looked up from her spot on the other side of the fire. He watched the pile of blankets rise and fall – once, twice, then again – before exhausted eyes unslitted themselves and she pulled herself upright to face him.

"I can pretend to be her, for little while," she offered, layers pooling in her lap as she watched him watch her. Expression infuriatingly steady – calm – as he held onto his composure by less than a thread.

"You don't want me to do that," he spat, lip curling in the ghost of a sneer. Like by sheer force he could get her to back off and just forget about all of this. Fighting a hair trigger as he shot to his feet, pacing. Channeling Daryl unconsciously - right down to the fire twisting underneath his skin – like part of him was trying to fill the void now that the man wasn't around to be surly and pig-headed.

_None of them were._

_Not Rick._

_Not Michonne._

_Not Abraham._

_Eugene._

_Tyreese._

_Sasha._

_Rosita._

_Carl._

_Not Carol._

_Not Daryl._

_Not a single one._

_They were all that was left._

They'd been okay for a little while. They'd managed to re-connect, re-group. Making it out of wherever the hell they'd ended up after Grady. He'd known the name of the place once. It'd been a town, a suburb, gated off, safe - at least for a little while. He'd lost track. Lost his center. He didn't even remember how they'd gotten here. How they'd come to this. To him, Tara and a puny little fire tucked into the back of a vine-covered mechanic's shop.

_It was pathetic really. He didn't even have his pack anymore. And Maggie's things, he-_

He felt the lines on his face – all caked blood and crumbling dirt – pull taut as his expression twisted. Struggling to peel away the red-tinged fog that seemed to be hemming him in at every turn, grinding his boots deep into the dry Georgia dust, like even the landscape was unstable.

_He couldn't think._

_He just wanted it to stop._

_Every breath was like taking a lead weight to the chest._

_Why was it so hard?_

_He knew this. He just had to remember. He knew-_

He closed his eyes, fists clenched tightly as he forced it. Forcing the memories that some distant part of him knew better than to dredge up. They left their shrouds reluctantly, like even the ghosts were calling foul. Because the last he'd seen of him – of Daryl - was a bloody hand reaching up, opening and closing for a single, tremulous second before it slipped out of Carol's hand as the herd took them both.

The man had said something just before it happened, yelling out, the words muffled under half a dozen geeks.

_It might have been her name._

_Either way, they'd never know._

"I do," Tara threw back, tone stinging - acrid like heartburn – as she brought him soundly back to the present. Watching him watch her as she looked at him, chin tipped up and defiant like  _he_ was the one being unreasonable.

His nails bit into his palms.

"If this is about the prison, about guilt or-" he started, remembering the look in her face when he'd given her back the gun and told her to come with him. When he'd pushed back the anger, the rage, the low throbbing deep in the back of his skull long enough to recognize her for what she was. Just a person. Not inherently bad. But not inherently good either. Just a person who'd made a mistake, and, unlike her friends, was willing to suffer the consequences for it.

_She'd looked at him like he was the sun after years of deep winter._

_Like he was her golden ticket and that she'd follow him anywhere._

_And she had._

"It isn't," she affirmed, uncoiling from the blanket to stand shakily. "It's not about that, it's about what you need."

The laugh that barked out was singular and haunting - hinging on hysteric.

_What he needed?_

_What did he need?_

He didn't know anymore. If he ever had.

He'd started off normal. He remembered that, remembered what'd come before. Moving to Atlanta. His first year of college. The peeling paint in his apartment. Living on noodles and cheap dollar store coffee. He'd slept less than he was probably supposed to. Played video games till his eyes hurt and ignored his homework. Everything you'd expect from his first year of real freedom. He'd gone out. Made new friends. Forgot to call his mother as often as he was supposed to and semi-ignored people's birthdays - the works.

When things fell apart, well, he'd changed right along with it. Going with the flow. Careful to keep the status quo. He'd rolled in with a couple people he already knew. T-dog had done some sort of church and community outreach thing at orientation and picked him up in his church van when he crashed his car trying to get out of grid-lock.

It was the hat, apparently.

He'd been saved the first time because the dude had remembered his  _hat_.

" _I remember you. Yeah. You're the sneaky one, the one with nerve. You don't scare easy, do you? I like that."_

He'd been desperate back then.  _God._  He'd been awkward, overeager and nervous. He'd been in a hurry to find a niche, to be useful. He'd figured out pretty quick that as a single person in a sea of families and sibling pairs, you had to make yourself not just valuable, but  _indispensable._

" _In and out, a few things, no problem."_

So he'd evolved. He'd become the person people turned to not for a solution to a problem, but to see that problem solved. He'd reinvented himself. Becoming an integral cog in the wheel – not the wheel itself – but right up there with it. All to remind everyone that he was important.  _That he mattered._  That they needed him. Like he'd said to Rick back in Atlanta, come the worst case scenario, the point was that he could be  _that far_  up shit creek and end up  _not_ needing the paddle.

And it had worked.

A bit too well, actually.

Because before he knew it, just like every other time in his life, he realized he'd let himself get type casted. Placed in a role somewhere between the lead and the background character. He'd  _become_  his role. The go-to guy. He'd made himself so indispensable that people started taking him for granted. Worse, they'd had him believing it.

Maggie had been the first one to see beyond that.

To remind him that he was more.

That he was  _worth_  more.

_Who was he now that she was gone? Who?_

"Let me help you."

He felt dizzy with it when he realized she believed it too. Every impossible word that had come out of her mouth, she was ready to fight for.  _For him._ She wasn't going to let it drop.

"Please?"

It was the blood stains on her shirt that did him in.

She was still wearing that same, _fucking_  shirt. The one when Maggie had-

"This is so messed up," he whispered, rubbing his hands over his face. Letting the sharp points of his nails dig into his face as he imagined claws ripping and tearing. Shedding old skin for the new. For something weaker and far less sure as the remnants of the old littered the ground around them like paper rain.

Her laugh was weak, a gross shadow of what had once been as she cocked her head and looked him right in the eye.

"So, what else is new?"


	2. Chapter 2

It started with silence, with a stillness so oppressive that he could feel the beats between the words that didn't get said. It started with a cut off gesture. With her taking a careful step forward and him taking an equal one back. It started with them just staring at one another, trying to figure out what the hell they were supposed to do next as somewhere in the distance a prey animal screamed.

The rest came gradually – naturally - like he'd just been looking for a reason as the world seemed to thin out and condense all at once. Heart hammering in his chest as thoughts graduated into words. A phrase. A sentence. An angry look. Before he finally lost it.

"It's okay," she said, proving the opposite when she leaned back as his fingers curled around her shoulders, biting and firm. "I'm okay."

_But that only made it worse._

_Because he didn't care._

_Because he didn't want her to be okay._

He was an angry, venomous, poison-spewing  _thing_. He was a cancer, aggressive and spreading. He was broken. And he didn't know if he wanted to be fixed. If he  _deserved_  to be fixed. There was blood on his hands and the worst part about it was that given enough time, he knew he'd be able to wash it off. Stuck in this ridiculous place between apathy and the inability to shake the feeling that no matter what he did,  _he_  was the thing that was wrong.

_He was the adaptable one._

_The sneaky one._

_The one who'd had them all fooled._

"Why?" he snarled, shaking her, face so close he could feel her flinch – dark hair lank and half curled in front of her face – as she tried and failed to look him in the eye. "Why did you leave?!"

She almost looked like her in that moment.

Half-shadowed and small.

Like she'd looked after Grady.

Scooped out and hollow.

His molars ground together as he looked her up and down, lingering over a snap-decision he'd already made as he fisted his hand in a messy thatch of her hair and  _pulled._

_Close enough._

He reared back, dragging her with him as he breathed in the stink of burnt ozone. Choking and cloying as he sucked it in like air - feeling it slick down the inside of his throat like a poison.

"This wasn't what you promised!" he spat, face twisting into something even his nightmares didn't recognize as a frightened sound slipped from her lips. "You promised! You promised and you left me! How could you leave me!?"

But he didn't see that.  _He didn't see her._  All he saw was Maggie's body splayed against the dew. Just like he'd found it that morning, a week after they lost the others, in the soft green just beyond the tree-line. Cold and blue and still just as achingly beautiful as she'd been the first time he'd seen her, riding in on that horse, baseball bat flying.

He didn't see the fear reflecting on her face any more than he felt the way his teeth were bared. Fighting against self-disgust and arousal as his cock pressed up against his zipper – adding a new layer to a moment he'd already lost control of as he ground himself into the arc of her hip and tried to remind himself of the all the reasons why she'd asked for this. Why she deserved it. Why-

" _This is the only picture I have of you!"_

" _You don't need a picture of me. You never will again."_

He didn't register he'd gone too far until he was pressing his lips against hers. Nipping and licking and forcing his way in until he got what he wanted and she started pushing back. Angry and snarling right back at him as they pushed and pulled, flinging each other away only to welcome them back a second later. Like they were caught in some sort of fucked up feedback loop that lasted right up until he slapped her up against crumbling brick and screamed into the pale of her throat.

The curve of her cheek tasted like rage. Like anger and regret and the bitterness of salt-tracks as disgust and desire waited impatiently in the wings. So he set his teeth into it and burned. Barely feeling the fist she knocked against his skull only a few seconds before she gripped a length of broken pipe just above them and hitched herself up. Wrapping her legs around his waist and crushing her breasts into his face.

He buried his face into her chest, inhaling, nosing at the pale, blue-veined softness before he grabbed the collar of her t-shirt and yanked, ripping the worn fabric until he had a window down the center. He preened at the predatory look it got him, before her hands were tugging at his belt, unable to hear what she was saying over the ringing in his ears. But he swatted her away regardless, crushing her back against the brick as he forced his hand past the waistband of her jeans. Thumbing the button and squirming downwards until he had her - dry and softly-furred against the pads of his fingers.

_Maggie had always liked it like this._

She'd liked it when he used his fingers, even when he'd had no idea what the hell he was doing. She taught him what she liked. Taught him through experience that she both loved and hated it when he worked her up to her peak again and again, keeping her there until he brought her off with his tongue. Slicking himself in her release as he slipped inside her before she'd finished coming down.

His fingers rasped, skating roughly through the smallest blurt of slick as he coaxed it out of her, painstaking and slow as she struggled against him. Biting at her lip as she leaned away, an instinctive reaction to discomfort. And for some sick reason it only made him laugh. It made him force his fingers deeper -  _harder_ \- as he watched Maggie writhe, loving it. Perfect hips arching up, following his fingers as he pressed open mouthed kisses into the dips, counting the freckles even though he already knew them by heart.

The pain in her voice charged the air, so when he tasted copper, he doesn't stop. Moving back to her lips and shredding through the split down the center like pain and pleasure were the same animal.  _Wanting_  it to hurt. Wanting her to  _feel_ it as Tara gave him everything he'd never once asked Maggie for.

* * *

When he came, hips stuttering, letting her muscles milk him – hesitant but spasmodic – he had just enough awareness to know that she hadn't. Tasting her tears as they streamed down her cheeks before he slammed up into her again, fighting his own sensitivity as he started to soften, forcing it from her with curled fingers that remembered every inch of Maggie's body.

_He knew how to make her sing._

_He knew how to make her like it._

He broke her hard and fast. Merciless and rough in a way he'd never dared to be as he laid hands on her. Digging his teeth into the inside of her thigh as she clenched around his fingers and sobbed. Crying out an unfamiliar name as his knees buckled and they toppled over, sprawled across the dirt in a mess of ripped clothes and beat up skin.

They landed with him half on top of her. With him trying to remember what sanity tasted like, what a clear head and level nerves actually felt like as they shuddered through the aftershocks. Staring blankly up at an unforgiving sky as he found the curve of Maggie's smile staring back at him from a skiff of cloud.

He'd known the feel of it once, of sanity, of being whole.

Tara whimpered. Trying to suck the sound back in as he turned his cheek, stubble rasping across the soft of her belly, feeling the raised furrows where he'd raked his nails. Too tired for the horror that might have flooded through him as the muscles in his thighs twitched lazily. There would be time for that later. For now, all he registered was the way her chest rose and fell underneath him. Steadying and affirming in every way he hadn't realized was comforting until right now.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, dragging his lips across her skin as the after-image separated and the woman he no longer had even a picture of faded into the dark. Leaving him with nothing but a freckled swathe of unfamiliar thigh and a pair of gaunt, haunted eyes as the fire cooled into ember somewhere behind them.

_It seemed appropriate, considering._

"Don't be," she murmured, ragged and sniffling for a handful of beats before cool fingers started carding through his hair. Smoothing it back in a comfortingly dependable rhythm, from temple to split-end, just like he remembered his mother doing when he'd been young. Humming under her breath as a mug of Omija tea cooled on the table beside her. A rare moment between mother and son before Ryung woke up from her nap.

"I needed to say goodbye too."

He didn't ask her what she meant by that.

He didn't think he'd be able to handle the answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reference:
> 
> "Ryung" is a Korean girl's name meaning "brightness."
> 
> Another big thanks to gunslingerdixon for the dialogue from the picture burning scene between Glenn and Maggie in season 4.


End file.
